Bruno Mars and Jack Johnson are not scheduled to perform as part of the 2017 edition of the annual “Experience Hendrix” tour, which stops Saturday at The Events Center at Harrah's Resort Southern California in Valley Center. But the fact that Mars and Johnson are both avid fans of Jimi Hendrix helps illustrate the enduring legacy of this electric guitar innovator, nearly half a century after his death.

“He is the greatest guitar player in the world … a guy who mastered that instrument. It was talking when he played!” Hawaii native Mars, 31, said.

“I’ve held back on saying this, but Hendrix has had more influence on me than anybody,” Johnson, 41, said.

Then there’s Atlanta hip-hop star Future, 33, who is naming his next album “HNDRXX” — it was originally titled “Future Hendrix” — as an acknowledgement of Hendrix’s impact on him.

Johnson has lots of company when citing the inspiration provided by the Seattle-born Hendrix, who was only 27 when he died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the first two albums by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, his pioneering power-trio — “Are You Experienced?” and “Axis: Bold as Love.”

“Hey Joe,” Hendrix’s debut single, came out in late 1966. His final concert took place in Germany, just 11 days before his death in London on Sept. 18, 1970.

Yet, while he released only four albums under his own name in his lifetime, this intensely shy yet undeniably charismatic musician thoroughly redefined the parameters of the electric guitar and rock and roll.

By constantly pushing musical boundaries, employing new technologies and fusing elements of blues, rock, soul, funk, jazz and more, Hendrix created a singular sound and style all his own.

He also set a standard for performing. Hendrix did this not only through his astonishing instrumental virtuosity, but by seemingly making love to his guitar on stage, before — in some instances — destroying it. His flair for showmanship saw him famously set fire to his guitar as he concluded his U.S. breakthrough performance at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival.

His impact then was dramatic. It still is now.

Hendrix’s albums are consistently strong sellers and the number of his posthumous releases grows year by year. Two of them, “Valleys of Neptune” and “People, Hell and Angels” rose to the No. 4 and No. 2 spots on the national Billboard album sales charts in, respectively, 2010 and 2013.

Both were released by Experience Hendrix, which in 2009 began licensing Hendrix’s recorded music through international powerhouse Sony Legacy.

To date, Hendrix has had at least 47 albums on the Billboard national sales charts, 43 of them posthumously. The latest Experience Hendrix-sanctioned album by Hendrix is “Machine Gun: The Fillmore East First Show 12/31/69,” which was released last year.

It was preceded by “Freedom: Atlanta Pop Festival,” which documents a 1970 performance the left-handed guitarist did barely two months before his death, and “Electric Church,” an expanded soundtrack to the identically titled Hendrix documentary on Showtime, both released in 2015.

In 2013, André 3000 of OutKast portrayed Hendrix on screen in the biopic, “Jimi: All Is by My Side.” At least two other Hendrix-related feature films are now in the works, including one that will be helmed by Oscar-nominated film director Paul Greengrass.

His remarkable re-invention of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” which in 1968 gave Hendrix his only U.S. Top 40 hit, so improved on the original that Dylan has used Hendrix’s arrangement ever since.

Eric Clapton’s 2016 live album, “Eric Clapton Live in San Diego, with Special Guest JJ Cale,” includes a reverent version of Hendrix’s “Little Wing.” Clapton first covered the song on “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” his 1970 album with the band Derek and the Dominos, and has performed it numerous times in the decades since then.

And Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, whose lineup includes two other former San Diegans, often performs a solo guitar arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” that pays homage to the shape-shifting anthem Hendrix unveiled at the fabled Woodstock festival in 1969.

“Most of Jimi’s songs on his records are under three minutes, yet they feel like they are epic,” said “Experience Hendrix” tour veteran Dweezil Zappa.

His famous father, former San Diegan Frank Zappa, was friends with Hendrix and the two guitarists jammed together a number of times. Dweezil inherited from his dad a Fender Stratocaster guitar that had been burned on stage by Hendrix and restored by the elder Zappa. It is so valuable that Dweezil uses it only for recording, not live performances.

“Jimi had a style that was so recognizable and it was also so much a part of his natural personality,” Dweezil said.

“He expressed himself with the guitar very freely and his performing style was always synchronized with his playing. It wasn’t an act; that’s just what he did to get the sound.”

This year marks Zappa’s fourth time as part of the annual “Experience Hendrix” concert lineup, which varies on different legs of the tour. One of the earliest incarnations of the tour included a 2002 stop at San Diego Street Scene, where the Hendrix-saluting lineup included Slash, Rolling Stones’ alum Mick Taylor, Dave Navarro, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, Robert Randolph and Eric Gales.

This year’s other “Experience Hendrix” participants include former Hendrix bassist Billy Cox, blues giant Buddy Guy (who was an early influence on Hendrix), ex-Ozzy Osborne guitarist Zakk Wylde (whose son is named Hendrix), Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang, Los Lobos members David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas, and Yugoslavian-born guitar shredder Anna Popvić, the only female artist on board this time around.

“I was maybe 4 or 5 years old when my father played me a Hendrix record in Belgrade,” recalled Popvić, who now lives in Los Angeles and has frequently performed Hendrix songs at her own concerts.

“When I started playing guitar at 12, I began watching Hendrix’s concert videos and he had this incredible energy on stage. That was before I got into his lyrics and the deeper messages in his songs. He transmitted an incredible energy through his guitar and became one with it.

“He really influenced me and I went after that kind of sound, style and freedom on stage. There is so much depth in his music — and his guitar playing was one of a kind. He was absolutely the first to do that. And, still to this day, nobody does that it that way.”

Weighing in on the legacy of Jimi Hendrix

No matter the year, or decade, musicians of all types are happy to chat about the impact of Jimi Hendrix. Here are quotes about the guitar icon from an array of Union-Tribune interviews.

Don Henley: "Jimi was an absolute original. You don't hear that kind of soul today."

Dave Navarro: “When I was about 10, I was at a skate (board) park, and they were playing Hendrix over the P.A. system; I think it was ‘Purple Haze.’ When I heard that, I realized I wanted to do whatever he was doing."

Keith Richards: "One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart — how I wish he was still around — almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats."

Jazz trombonist Ray Anderson: "Hendrix made the link for me between John Coltrane and James Brown and the blues; he had the energy of my generation.”

Sting: "I must've been 14 and Jimi Hendrix played at the Club A-Go-Go in Newcastle. I'd never seen a black man before, let alone a black man who was 6 feet tall with an Afro haircut and a sort of 17th century military costume. I'd never seen anyone play left-handed guitar or destroy his amplifier and his guitar during a song. I'd never seen anybody play like that. It was terrifying, traumatic, an epiphany! I said, ‘This is what I want to aspire to. I'll never be Jimi Hendrix, but I can do something'.”

Jethro Tull mastermind Ian Anderson: “Jimi had something that, immediately, you knew he was different. Not just his guitar playing, but the way he looked and sang.”

George Benson: "It's amazing the power of Jimi Hendrix's legacy. When I heard him do the national anthem, I thought, ‘Wow, what a genius!' And then I knew why people had worshipped his guitar playing. He was an inventive guitar player and, unlike a few of the other greats, he was not afraid to try something. Although his playing was blues-based and inspired by people like B.B. King, he truly played from the heart. He was unique."

B.B. King: "I know that Stevie Ray Vaughan, without a doubt, listened to him and you can tell that most of the modern guitarists do also. You can hear him through them. I got a lot of ideas listening to him."

Etta James: "Jimi and one of my background singers, Faye, used to live with me in New York in the early '60s, when he was working as a roadie for the Isley Brothers. She was his old lady, and they would both sleep in the bathtub in my one-room apartment. We named him `Egg Foo Young' because he loved to eat egg foo young so much! Believe me, at that time Jimi couldn't play; all he could do was turn the guitar up real loud. As a matter of fact, he was playing that two-stringed blues stuff. We knew he had the potential, but music hadn't gotten to that psychedelic, tie-dyed point yet. He just took the blues and intensified it. People think he was a master, but he was just `Egg Foo Young' to us.”

Tracy Chapman: "It's a given that Hendrix was a very talented guitarist. He was doing his own thing instead of what was expected of black musicians at the time. Having listened to his records for a long time, I have a great appreciation for his technique and innovation."

Joe Satriani: “My first musical epiphany probably was Jimi Hendrix, listening to ‘Purple Haze’ on the radio. It was when I was still a drummer, when I was 9 or 10. It sounded completely different from any kind of music. It had a profound effect on me, that — mentally — there was no way I could explain. … When I was 14, I was all suited up in my football gear for a game at my school. Someone came in the locker room and told me Hendrix had just died, and I knew then and there I would be a guitarist. I quit the team on the spot.”

Former David Bowie/King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew: "Without Jimi Hendrix I don't even know if I'd be here playing guitar. He exploded my idea of what guitar playing is. He's responsible for fielding quite a few generations of guitar players. I also loved his voice. Not many people say much about his voice, but I thought he had the coolest sound in his singing. I must admit that the first time I heard ‘Purple Haze,' I thought: ‘This guy must have dropped in from another planet'!"